These are not the fight scenes you’re looking for

November 11, 2008

Now, call me a Sith Lord, but I tend to think in absolutes. Either something is worth watching, or it isn't. There's really no go-between. In binary terms, it's either a 1 or a 0.

So if I'm going to watch a fight scene, I'm not just going to watch any fight scene. I'm going to hunt down the most uber fight scene like it's a voodoo-using drug lord and I'm a bloodthirsty, revenge-seeking Steven Seagal.

Yeah, kind of like he did in "Marked for Death."

The funny thing about the video labeled "Best fight scene of all time" on YouTube, though, is that it is not the best scene. By any means. Though it has gotten nearly three million views, this particular specimen is an exercise in both awkward homoeroticism and gratuitous violence. Not necessarily a winning combination.

So, OK. I messed up and found a weird, but funny, video instead of the coolest fight ever. Let's make like "The Transporter" and shift gears.

We're going to set our standards as low as possible, switch our phasers on "stun," and hope the stupidity of what we find shocks us back into awesomeness. And with a video called "Worst fight scene ever," we may do just that.

Fact Box

YouTube keywords:

Best/worst fight

scenes ever

But who better to helm the sinking ship of this column than William Shatner himself? For children three and under: He's the Priceline Negotiator. For everyone else, he's the Captain of the Enterprise, and he's had more than his share of epic battles.

This, however, is not one of them. He swings his punches so slowly that you have to wonder if he thought the film was going to be sped up later. While the video's info says simply that, "It's intense," it most surely is not. And yet, the entirety of the two-minute, agonizingly bad fight scene is thoroughly entertaining.

Still, there are other fight scenes to be seen - many, indeed, are being suggested to me in the "Related Videos" section of YouTube right now. And so, my young Padawan, though I've much to teach you, it is time I must go.